


Civilian Relations

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [82]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24161038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Adventures in the Coruscant Guard
Series: Soft Wars [82]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 55
Kudos: 512





	Civilian Relations

**Author's Note:**

> Rated because of Fox's potty mouth.
> 
> And [@thellamacorn](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr hasdrew my beautiful boy [Blockade](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/post/617977017296650240/i-get-the-feeling-blockade-is-one-of-those-people) in all his tired glory! Seriously, it's amazing!

“Vod,”Fox says with the weight of a lifetime of wanting the best from people and being constantly disappointed. This is why he’s going gray at the temples: he’s literally _rubbing the pigmentation out of his hair_. “Vod really? How are we supposed to clean this up?”

“Wait,” Stone snaps. “‘Vod’? ‘ _Vod_ ’ with an air of fatherly disapproval? ‘ _We_ ’ are gonna clean this up? What the _hell_ is that?”

“If I’d done this I’d be making sure to keep my back to the closest exit with stairs and Blockade between us,” Thire agrees. “I’m not accusing you of favoritism-”

“ _I_ am,” Stone says.

“But there’s a definite difference-”

“I like the troops better than both of you,” Fox interrupts. “And Thorn and Hound too. Because every one of you are the same flavor of fuckup but you four spent a decade theoretically learning how to not be.” Fox rolls a gimlet eye over two of the CCs of his command staff. “You’re shit at it, in case you haven’t guessed.”

“Yes,” Fox hears Blockade muttering to the trooper. “They are actually friends. No one’s been shot yet, at any rate.”

And Blockade is _actually_ Fox’s favorite. No it’s _not_ because Fox imagines he’s the only CC who ever gets any karking work done and Blockade is a lucky, lucky hyper-competent CT.

Fox isn’t _imagining_ the CC lack of productivity, okay? He’s required to check Priority chat whenever it dings; he’s got _hard evidence_.

“Vod,” Fox says, just to watch Stone puff up like one of those poison fish the Nautolani keep in tanks in their Senate offices, part decoration part dinner.

It had sprung a leak once. Guard Command had all learned how to recaulk tank corners. Three days later they’d all learned how to change transpariplast panels in a floor-to-ceiling tank. Learning _all_ sorts of new things during this war, Fox thinks with a certain tiredness.

He stretches out a hand, waits patiently for the trooper to take it. Then, on a whim, he extends his other and flicks his fingers impatiently. Both hands, makes sure he has all of the kid’s attention. He likes that, might make it a habit.

“What’s your name?” Another nice thing about gripping both hands: the trooper can only get partway through trying to snap a salute and reciting his designation before being derailed. “Your name vod, not your barcode.”

“It’s, uh,” his eyes dart around, as if trapped. Fox can see the moment he decides that it isn’t in his best interests to try to appeal to the other command staffers. Stone’s bald scalp has got to be dangerously purpling with annoyance at Fox’s clear preferential treatment, and Thire’s patience only runs so deep. Thire has that kind of face that doesn’t frown, but the lines around his mouth get deeper and his eyebrows get lower. It triggers something instinctive to flee.

Blockade always kind of looks like he’s evaluating how much your spleen would net him Low-side.

“Some folks are calling me Jive, sir,” he manages finally. Fox swings his hands, drags the kid’s attention right back. Yeah, Fox is gonna make this a habit. He’ll check to see if it’ll work on Ponds, too.

“Jive?”

“I like music? And I go dancing at 79s a lot. Sir.”

The kind of things that vode are taking as names now. Well at least it’s not another ‘Toast’. The entire Guard command had passed around a confiscated bottle after that one because _Force_ , what’s wrong with kids these days? Is the genetic sample they’re using degrading, now that Fett grabbed the only one of his spawn he gave a shit about and karked off and they can’t get fresh? Probably.

“Seems fitting then,” Fox says, because he’s an unmitigated, well-practiced bastard but he’s not a _monster_. A Name’s all a vod has, sometimes. “Alright, Jive. Why’s there a drunk boy in my front office?”

“ _Cuffed_ to my _desk_ ,” Blockade grunts. There’s slow, visceral murder lurking behind his bloodshot eyes. Jive shifts so Fox is a little more directly between them.

It’s sweet, that he thinks anyone in this room could save him from Blockade. The only _thing_ that could save him already has: Blockade likes this carpet. If this drunk boy harks on it though, well, bets are off.

“The desk is the most solid thing in there,” Jive explains. Fox by now is a professional at picking out the ‘it sounded like a good idea at the time’. It’s usually followed by ‘rapid, desperate regret’.

“Still not answering the question, _trooper_ ,” Stone drawls. Jive shifts so Fox is between him and Stone too.

It’s the weirdest karking thing; Thire had told them but Fox hadn’t believed him for a second. But it sure as sith hairy hells looks like it might be true: the troopers are more comfortable with Fox than the rest of them. Not a one of the staff can figure it, but Blockade has this one theory: Fox only ever beats the shit out of Command staff. Or Ponds. Or that persistent, uppity little fuckwit. People he knows can take it, can fight back, can give back as good as he dishes out. He’d swallow a karking blaster before raising a hand against a little brother who couldn’t.

“Jive-”

“It was Coruscant Security Force.”

Here’s another truth Fox has learned: if there was ever a phrase that would unite the Coruscant Guard Command Staff, even faster than _Oya_ , it’s ‘Coruscant Security Force is trying to make us do more of their work again’.

Some senator somewhere had suggested a friendly limmie game between the two forces, to help with the tensions. That suggestion’s remained DOA and Fox hopes that never changes: he’s not entirely sure he could prevent the murders.

Thire pushes off from his lounge in the doorway separating Blockade’s workspace from Fox’s. Stone snaps up straight in furious stiffness. Blockade throws back his caff like the pot it came from isn’t A) Fox’s private stash and B) still boiling as they speak.

“What did those fucking evolutionary accidents do this time?” Even odds that the knife Stone’s suddenly procured is also appropriated from Fox’s stash.

Jive huffs, and Fox drops his hands because that was a ‘Fox needs to be armed’ kind of sound. “Stopped me in the street, right outside 79s. Said I was Senate Guard and babysitting Senate sporgs was my job, and they just dumped him on me.” He glares in the direction of the door. On the other side, a curly haired probably part-something-else Devaronian boy no more than _barely_ legal starts making up the lyrics to a popular pop song, with an extra helping of raunchy.

And a description of Jive’s backside, it sounds like.

“Ah. The handcuffs.”

Jive flushes embarrassed and annoyed. “He’s handsy, sir.” Yeah, someone’s going to have to cut Hound off before he hears about that, Force fuck a sith. Senate spawn getting fresh with a vod… fuck Fox is gonna have to send Hound on assignment _far_ Low-side for weeks.

“Funny, thought we were _Coruscant_ _Guard_ ,” Thire hums, all slow passivity that fools anyone who hasn’t fought him. “Not a local drunk tank.”

“Whatever Coruscant needs, whenever Coruscant needs it,” Stone bites.

Fuck. Sometimes, quietly, Fox wonders if he shouldn’t just let that uppity little fuckwit win, next time he tries to challenge Fox to get Guard to submit to him. Whatever fuckery he’s planning, has to be better than this.

“Go home,” he’s said before he’s even consciously decided, and it feels right. “Jive, you’ve been off the clock this whole time right?” Fox knows he’s right: no Guard would wear their grays so casually, cover missing, top unbuttoned to show his white undershirt, while on duty. “Take the next shift off, get some actual sleep. The rest of you. Take off, shift’s almost done anyway, and I can do handover when Thorn and Hound get in.”

Tonight the office is a drunk tank for some senator’s kid. They don’t all need to be here to deal with it. Fox can stick around til hand-off, or until the kid burns through the intoxicants in his system and Fox can kick him out.

There’s a variety of ‘sir’s in a variety of tones. Jive is eager to get away from this whole thing, but Fox’s staff is too damn loyal for their own good. “ _Out_ ,” he barks, and only the trooper scrambles. The others share looks, Stone and Thire flickering through the battlesign bastardized dialect that their cadet squad came up with to insult other squads, not just the trainers. The byplay ends, and there are two left standing.

“Stone,” Fox says and he puts a day and a half of weariness behind it.

“ _Vod_ ,” Stone replies, and the word reminds Fox he’s actually a sithheel. “Someone needs to be around to say they saw you never lay a hand on him,” he points out. And kark, yeah two-man rule for dealing with civs was Fox’s own design wasn’t it? Always need one man to prevent the other from trying to smack some sense into a civ. It never works and just causes paperwork.

Blockade turns off his massive, intimidating, antiquated switchboard as he and Thire go. The kid catcalls, and Thire holds his gaze, long and blank until the kid flushes dark, mottled orange and hunkers down. Thire nods once, satisfied, and follows the Sgt.

Paranoid bastards, Fox loves these assholes.

Stone helps himself to a cup of Fox’s caff, one of _Fox’s_ cups no less, and Fox takes back the compliment. He loves all the rest of them. Stone can go drown.

“Well sir,” Stone says, slips because Fox has always had them be casual with him behind these walls that is _their_ space, but sometimes every one of them drops back to deference to cover unease. “What now?”

“ _Hey is the hot dad still in there? Come on,_ _come entertain me_ _, I’m bored!_ ”

Fox snaps a hand out and quickly relieves Stone of his knife. And yeah, it’s Fox’s, karking thief. The blaster’s his though, but Fox takes it too, for good measure. He has to smack Stone’s hand from his holster to get at it.

“Stand down, LT.”

“ _Where_ does he get off,” Stone hisses. “I get that no one here gives any of us any karking respect but some _common fucking decency_ -”

“This is Coruscant, vod,” Fox says, not gently but not unkindly either. “No one here’s decent.” He smacks a hand on either side of Stone’s head, clonks their heads together in the way he knows makes Stone feel it in his teeth. Part ‘I’m here vod’, part ‘stop being a whiny bitch, we have work to do’. Fox always did believe in efficiency of language. “Drink your caff.”

“ _Your_ caff,” Stone grumbles as if Fox needed the reminder. “You won’t let us replace the machine in our office.”

“Because you dumbasses tried to make a mochachino in a carafe because you saw it on the holonet.”

“It almost worked.”

They’d set off the fire alarm, and only frantic hand-waving worship at the detector had cut it off before anyone had to sound an evacuation of a _Senate annex_. Yeah, the morons can deal with another month of instant for that.

“ _Hot clone daaaaad!_ ”

Stone grits his teeth. Fox smacks his head once more, for good measure.

“I’d better go entertain our guest,” Fox decides. “If we’re lucky, he’ll pass out and won’t wake up til he’s Thorn’s problem.”

“And if we’re not lucky, we could rig that,” Fox pretends he doesn’t hear Stone say.

* * *

His name is Cass Vilnok, he’s just under mostly Devaronian and only politically advantageous to one of his five progenitors. Apparently his tiny horns mean something embarrassing.

Stone gets incredibly uncomfortable even before the tears start, disappears for a half hour and comes back with Grizzer on a leash and the news that Hound only let him borrow the massiff in exchange for covering the first half of his next shift.

They spend the night like that, Fox in the unenviable position of sitting criss-cross on the floor, patting the kid’s skinny back while he hugs the massiff and occasionally cries between its spines. Stone periodically runs off for ‘something that might help’, usually about when the crying starts again.

Fox makes a note to ask whose office he raided for the Hoth Chocolate. That was some _good_ stuff.

At one point Stone fetches actual clothes, ones that aren’t ripped down the front and basically no back, and conversation goes a little bit easier. The kid is legal on Coruscant, but very much not on Devaron, and his attempts at commanding familial attention last night got him a little deeper down the levels than he’d meant to go.

Neither vod is any good at dealing with the crying bits, but Grizzer steps up like a champ. Fox makes a note to see if he can promote it. Shouldn’t be hard: far as Fox can tell, the massiff is coded the same way clones are.

By the time Thorn brings first shift in with him, the kid is sober and staring bleary-eyed at a Dejarik game he’s been losing for an hour.

He’d declined their offers to call someone to come get him. They could kick him out; he’s coherent, only a couple buildings over from his Tertiary Progenitor's office. Someone there would make sure he got home.

He’s half swimming in the smallest clothes they have, the ones they bought specifically for the speedies Kamino’s been crapping out onto the field before they’ve even finished their final growth spurt.

Stone meets Fox’s eye above the kid’s head. Fox curses. Yeah, yeah they’re not doing that, are they? Fuck, they’re gonna set _precedent_ , aren’t they? They’re _not babysitters_!

“I’ll take him,” Stone intones dully, coming to the same conclusion. “Call me a speeder.”

“Assigning a driver too,” Fox says, because they still have to fake professionalism and Stone’s been up all night.

“There’s glitter in the carpet,” Thorn says with full, clear judgment as soon as Stone extracts their invader and whisks him off to wherever lost him. “You _know_ the mousedroids are gonna whine.”

Fox slaps him on both sides of his curly head, drags him down for a vicious, ringing headbutt. “You have command and the office,” he greets fondly as is their habit. ‘Stop being a bitch’ he doesn’t need to say for Thorn to hear him anyway. “Just make sure they’re done before Blockade comes back.”

“Kark you too, boss,” Thorn groans, already tired of the day.

“ _ Kot _1,” Fox drawls and taps twice, because the day’s not liable to get any easier.

“Get out of my Front Office, you look like something Grizzer choked up.”

Fox gets. If he’s lucky, he’ll make it all the way back to barracks without a disaster.

There’s a hundred and fifty floors between him and the shuttle bay, and a ten minute walk after that. At this hour, somewhere between three and four hundred aides and early risers are already in getting ready for session. One of them probably needs a toilet unclogged. One of them is probably waiting near the elevators for that very reason.

He dons his bucket, holsters his blaster, preps for another day of battle in Coruscant Senate District.

They need jetpacks, so they can just jump out the window and avoid that shit altogether. But Coruscant Guard authorized funding basically doesn’t cover any actual combat necessities. Fox makes a note to use the office furniture authorization to buy another unnecessarily ornate desk for somewhere, justfor spite.

Fox wonders how if he could just suck up to that little blond shit to get some; he’s heard they make their own. He’ll have Blockade contact their comms squadron; can’t hurt to ask.

Dawn breaks over Coruscant and low class criminals scuttle like roaches back to their holes. The high class criminals roll blinking and huffy into the daylight to spend time validating their excesses and summoning the Guard to deal with their waste.

Yeah, jetpacks, to avoid the scum. And maybe swoop bikes, for sidewalks where you can't use a speeder. Yeah, Blockade can probably justify that to Budget.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Strength. If this is your first time dabbling in this little universe of mine, know that this is an in-joke that started [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23407009). Back  
> 


End file.
